


The Impossibility of Hearts

by bluebatwings



Series: unremembering [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Grieving, Living, M/M, Magnus POV, after unremembering, fairy tale storytelling, pre-finale, the author accidentally poured her heart out on paper and this is what happened, unremembering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-28 04:36:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11410347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebatwings/pseuds/bluebatwings
Summary: The tale of a man who lived, for a time, without his heart.Or, How it is possible to go on, even when it is impossible. (Sometimes, that’s how the world works, whether you believe it or not. (Magic works like that too. Whether you believe it or not.))





	The Impossibility of Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> My take on some Magnus things <33
> 
> Thank you thank you to Tori, who read this and assuaged my fears.

When the only person who can fix what is broken is dead, one would assume it would stay broken. Magnus assumed he would never have a functioning heart again.

Or, indeed, have a heart at all. He was fairly sure it wasn’t just the absence of its beats he felt, but a complete hollowness where it should have been. The dull recognition of his heart being gone barely fazed him, and that, perhaps, was proof enough.

In an impossible feat, his heart was ripped from his chest and still he lived. (It was not the first time, but he didn’t know that yet.) Although it was a different kind of living from what he knew before, he still breathed and woke up every morning. At first, his mind was as vacant as his chest. His senses remained, but he’d lost the way to process them; everything was dim, lacking the vibrancy which takes a heartbeat to truly experience. For some people that is living enough, but for him, he thought, it would have been better if he were dead. But it was just a thought, and he did nothing with it. He didn’t do much of anything, anymore. He was, somehow, _heavier_ now that he no longer had a heart inside of him.

(During this time, if we could open Magnus’s chest, we would, in fact, find no trace of a heart. We would be amazed to see the empty space, where we could imagine a heart might have once been. Magnus would be unsurprised upon learning this.)

He did not believe in the saying, that _time can heal all wounds_ . There was a hole left inside of him, created by and for Julia, and she was no longer there to fill it. Instead, there were the only things left to a person no longer in possession of a heart: anger, rage, sorrow, hatred. They filled the empty space, infecting it like an exposed wound. And it hurt, that wound, and it would not heal because he would not let it, refused to allow it. He let death inhabit him, her death where his heart, infused with her life, had once beat. In his emptiness, he thought keeping her death kept _her_ with him.

And so he did not expect the gradual stitching together that began when he didn’t notice. He would tear the stitches open when he discovered them-- it scared him, when he found himself thinking of other things, feeling echoes of what he used to be able to feel. If he were to heal, he would lose her, he was sure. He would have nothing, nothing at all, then; no heart, and no wound to even remember her by. It might not be _healthy_ to constantly slash the hole back open-- _but if that’s what it takes--_

It altered him, of course it did. A broken, heartless man, he also became driven by something that only served to make him sicker. Revenge always seems sensible and good to a person with nothing to lose. It almost killed him, in the end, but that was no matter; dying was not the worst thing he could imagine. That had already happened. And so it was that he set forth with a sort of single-minded determination to make the man that deserved to pay for his crimes pay _dearly_. Without his heart, he could hardly control his hatred.

But a fairy tale often involves magic, and while sometimes magic is black, sometimes it is not. As surely as Magnus had one day lost his heart, it one day reappeared. Not out of the blue-- that is a story in itself, to be told on a different day, but it consists of Magnus believing he’d found his wife’s murderer, and in his blind rage almost succeeding in killing both himself and a town full of innocent people (and not even succeeding in killing the monster, to boot). It was this that made him feel it, for the first time since her death: the dull ache inside of him that one needs a heart to actually _feel_. He had not experienced a heartbeat in what had seemed like so long that at first he didn’t even know what it was.

The return of his heart came at just the right moment (magic seems to have a knack for knowing when that is). He was far gone, but not far enough to know that, were she there, Julia wouldn’t recognize the man he had become. He had, for a time, lived without his heart, and lived long enough to see the day that it returned. (Sometimes, impossible things are possible.)

Heart firmly back in place and learning how to beat again, Magnus had to make a terrible decision: he let the hole stitch together inside of him. There was room, he’d found, next to his heart where he could have kept the wound, but that would lead to history repeating itself, and he was not sure he could live without his heart twice. (He could, in fact-- had done, actually. If it were to happen again it would be the third time, but he did not know this.)

And so the space closed; no one could ever fill it, anyway. But he didn’t leave Julia behind altogether. This time, he found a way to fill himself with her _life_ and not poison himself with her death. He instilled her into the heart he had not realized he had missed so dearly.

Things did not get immediately better; magic does not quite work like that, no matter how we might wish it. But he heals, and an interesting revelation one day occurs: Magnus discovers, after years of believing it isn’t possible, that more than one person can carve out their own space inside of you. It’s a way Magnus was sure he would never feel again, and it is here that this particular tale ends, making way for the next.  
~

It knocks him on his ass when he acknowledges the warmth in his belly when he’s with Taako for what it is-- different from what he’d known before, but still recognizable, and still very good. It scares him shitless, though. He keeps it to himself for some time, since he can hardly parse it in his own head, never mind _talk_ about it, with _words_.

It isn’t a planned event when he finally fucking does something about it, the night of the Fire Festival. The combination of the warmth and joy of the festival, a little liquid courage, Taako looking like _that_ while raving about the food, his own heartbeat in his chest-- it’s almost like Magnus’s hand moves by itself, fingers alighting on Taako’s cheek, palm cupping his jaw.

When he gives in, when he finally lets himself have this without shame (and without the fear of old wounds), it’s like a homecoming, of sorts. First: a friendship, with both Taako and Merle, unlike anything he’s ever experienced (he thinks. Of course, he doesn’t know the truth). They are obnoxious, funny, ridiculous, the best companions. They are the first living people to make him feel that his heartbeats _mean_ something again. And then: Taako-- sly, selfish, gorgeous, brave Taako-- begins digging, without knowing it, a place inside of Magnus, a place very much like Julia’s. (Magnus doesn’t know Taako isn’t creating a new space but simply reinstating himself into the one he had made long ago, the one neither of them can remember. In that way, it _is_ a homecoming. A century of forgotten friendship, companionship, _love_ that they’d had, finally being realized again. When Magnus does remember, he can’t bring himself to regret the years unremembering, even if they do include his time without a heart; he is who he is now because Julia is a part of him. He’d lost Taako (and his heart, the first time-- another story, for a different time) and it had brought him to Julia, and he is thankful. (Sometimes the price of love just happens to be the exact cost of pain.)

When he remembers, when _they_ remember, finally, Taako looks pale and broken, and the first thing he says is, _Lup_ . The name pierces like an arrow through Magnus’s memory. It causes an ache that must be doubled, tripled for Taako. But then he’s looking at Magnus and his eyes widen, as if _their_ part is coming back now, and Magnus feels like his throat is closing up, and tears threaten to spill from his eyes. Years and years and _years_ come back to them. Magnus remembers the beach, when he kissed Taako for the first time; the memory is startlingly similar to their first kiss, their _other_ first kiss, at the Fire Festival, how Magnus was unsure but his heart too full to _not_ be doing something about it. He remembers them, separate from each other, and he remembers them together, and Taako seems to be getting the same flashes because he says,

“How the _fuck_ did we do it again--” and they partially have Lucretia to thank for that, Magnus thinks, but this is the moment he might also start believing in crazy shit like _fate_ and _soulmates_. He reaches out until he gets a fistful of Taako’s shirt and then they’re holding each other, remembering, astounded, and Magnus is a crier, has never been ashamed of that, and he’s getting Taako’s hair wet but Taako doesn’t seem to care.

After a moment, Magnus shoots an arm out and grabs Merle, pulling him in, and then Lucretia, and Davenport, and Barry (and Taako is complaining about being smothered but Magnus knows he doesn’t really mean it). Lup isn’t there, and Magnus aches for her, and can feel Taako aching too, but for now he holds what he has, his family, his fucking _family_ , and they have work to do, he knows, but he thinks, _it can goddamn wait._  
~

The next part of the tale is yet to be written. There is still so much to be done, and too much to remember, and it will be hard. Good too, though, Magnus thinks when he looks at Taako. Magnus has lived through worse things, and he is not afraid of hard work.


End file.
